This comes as the Israeli government has called up 10 battalions of reserve soldiers to handle the escalating violence in the region.

The army study mirrors the earlier findings of Israeli scholar Martin van Creveld, a specialist in international conflict and author of the book “Men, Women and War,” who found that women lacked the physical strength needed for fighting at close quarters and that their relative weakness could, in some cases, put themselves and their comrades in unjustifiable danger.

Van Creveld concluded sending women into frontline combat units would reduce efficiency, increase costs and could prove “criminal.” His opinion largely swayed British officials in their 2001 decision not to lift the ban on women in combat.

The Israeli army study also fuels the long-simmering debate over the role of female servicewomen in the U.S. military. Proponents of women in combat historically point to the experience of Israeli servicewomen who fought alongside men in the 1948 independence war as an example to be emulated.

Retired Navy Capt. Lory Manning, director of the Center for Women in

Uniform for the Women’s Research and Education Institute, argues some

women are strong enough and physically capable of serving in infantry and

Special Forces and that, given training, those who aren’t can make up for their

weaknesses.

Manning cites British studies in which women were called upon to run six

miles carrying 55 pounds on their back. After approximately three months of

“There is no more reason to believe they ever existed any more than Barbarella or Wonderwoman,” he told the London Sunday Telegraph.

Van Creveld, who has studied the historical experiences of women in the military dating back to the Roman era, works to “explode the myth” about Israeli women in combat serving as ably as men. During the 1948 independence war, for example, women only served a brief couple of weeks on the frontlines before a group was ambushed and the desecration of their bodies prompted officials to sideline women warriors.

Israel is the only country in the world to have compulsory military service

for women. While men must serve three years in the Israel Defense Forces,

all women are required to serve 21 months.

Despite a 1995 Israeli court ruling that struck down the “men-only” rule for

combat units, women have not served in combat since 1948, and integration into combat-support platoons has been slow. According to IDF statistics, 84 percent of female soldiers still serve in administrative roles with only 1 percent training for combat roles, and 82 percent of female soldiers

have had no weapons training.

Israeli servicewomen point to their sisters-in-arms in America to push for

further integration in Israeli forces. Since the elimination in 1994 of the

United States Department of Defense “Risk Rule,” which held that women could not be placed in combat-support units that had “significant risk of capture,” American servicewomen have been serving among combat-engineer companies on the ground, populating combatant ships and sitting in the cockpits of jets, bombers and Apache attack helicopters.

“In the U.S. Army, you see the girls going everywhere and doing all things,”

sounds bad, but one day I hope they’ll transfer us to the hot places, too. I want

to have a chance to prove myself and show everyone what I’ve learned.”

“We are a nation that has to take war seriously,” van Creveld testified in 1992 for a U.S. presidential commission studying the ramifications of allowing women in combat. “We are proud of the fact that we have not had women serve in combat [since 1948] even in the most desperate of times.”

Military advocates opposed to women serving in combat in the U.S. welcome the Israeli army study as additional ammunition for their fight.

Speakers Bureau, said the disparity in physical strength between men and women matters. She pointed to the Army’s fielding of a new rucksack for soldiers estimated to weigh 120 pounds when loaded to full capacity.

Operation Iraqi Freedom was the first combat test for the new Modular Lightweight Load-bearing Equipment, or MOLLE. The Army Times reported the excessive weight of the rucksack hampered a 101st Airborne Division air assault in May as “infantrymen staggered under the load.”

“If women can’t carry their own backpacks, then men must carry them, which adds to their burden. The physical limitations are practical realities,” Donnelly told WorldNetDaily.

Donnelly hopes to present the petition in a personal
meeting with Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. While she has met with White House officials, no meeting is yet scheduled.